Stepdaughter and Daughter's Wedding

His daughter is being ridiculous, yes she can be angry that her parents got divorced, She can also be upset that her dad is going to walk her step sister down the aisle.
To chuck a huge ultimatum in to not only her dads life but also her step sisters life weeks before a wedding is just nasty.
Surely she’s had her entire adult life and probably years of an engagement and wedding planning to voice her feelings.. Why wait until now.
People are saying op is in the wrong for threatening to leave her husband over this are missing the point.
She is going to have to explain to her daughter that her step dad will not call his daughters bluff and her wedding day will not be the day she had planned.
Where does it end.. I don’t want my daddy around someone else’s children, my children should be the first grandchildren so if she gets pregnant first I want you to pretend they don’t exist .. Ignore the step side until I say so or I’ll never talk to you again!
I don’t blame you for considering walking away op, they sound like a lot of work and heartache. BTec Betty indeed! I’d be fuming.

I'm not sure there's any way to know whether it matters to her deeply or is a big deal. She might just want to do the bride a malicious turn. (We can be certain, I think, that she dislikes her.)

Of course it affects her. She’s made it clear that it matters to her deeply. Thinking it shouldn’t be a big deal doesn’t mean it isn’t one for her.

He can walk his stepdaughter down the aisle if he’s prepared to lose his relationship with his daughter. He isn’t.

Well now we know that it's just because they're not very nice people then. They sound like nasty, jealous, entitled little shits!

How is he not putting her first? It doesn’t affect her in the slightest, he can still walk her down the aisle, be at her wedding- it’s not stopping him.

i have DD’s. If one said dh couldn’t walk the other down the aisle because they felt sidelined or second class I’d think they’d gone mad. Same as if they said he couldn’t walk their step sister down the aisle, of course he can.

This is probably the best way forward! Such a sad situation for all on what should be an amazingly happy occasion. I can see all sides, which makes it even sorrier!

Or maybe for once his daughter wants him to put her first instead of his step daughter?

Given OP updates it’s not difficult to understand how difficult it must have been for the children. Adding OP lashing out that she’d divorce her husband if he agreed to his daughter’s request makes me wonder what her behaviour was like when the children were younger.

Not so easy to get over childhood trauma. Regardless what age you get to.

Reach any further and you’ll topple over.

I’m curious here just pondering the ratio of students at uni in step families vs nuclear. Also was the step a mum or dad.

In the real world most people aren’t automatically miserable through having a blended family. I teach uni aged students, loads have blended families. I teach a module where they specifically have to talk about how they view their family and the vast majority speak very highly of stepparents and step siblings and very common for them to say they don’t care/dont see the lack of biological link. But on Mumsnet having a stepfamily is akin to child abuse and the worst and most selfish thing you could subject a child to. You must stay single until they have left home because they will despise their life otherwise.

She said she’d be disgusted if he didnt walk her stepsister down the aisle given that he helped raise her.

@InterIgnisreally insightful comment and why blended families are such an incredibly difficult family type to navigate well. But I think the centre of this issue is DH, without him guiding, building relationships, making decisions which benefit everyone success rate is just not possible.

my husband is slowly realising this, that making decisions without discussion, by not nurturing his relationships with individuals in the family the house of cards falls. It’s such a delicate balance and if not everyone is considered or challenged it’s not going to work.

Probably more adult children and fathers devastated that they were lied too rather than suddenly going well you had no right to expect dna type family privileges all those years.

Weird argument tbh though would once again prove that dna matters more than just being there when children are dropped after being raised for years then found to be another mans.

Kinda going against the whole step dad is her dad. Really a lot of the time men are worried about the child of the person they get to have sex with and keeping her in the good books so the bed open.

I mean I am confused. You say you would be disgusted if it was your dad but then admit you were lucky and you know not all families are like that.

I agree it’s probably not the way to find peace. However, The Op is talking about divorce. I am going to guess it’s not the first time. It seems extreme ultimatums are the norm in that family. Peace may not be an option.

Ops posts are extremely biased as well. Maybe it’s not about finding peace. Not everything is about finding peace.

Imagine the total confusion and furious backpedaling if one day a DNA text proved that SD wasn't, in fact, DH's biological daughter. All of the apologist arguments would fall apart and she'd just be a whiner in the blink of an eye.

I wonder what happens in families where 23andme has revealed that secret? Adult children everywhere being held to account. Unthinkable.

It shouldn’t come at the expense of the children’s happiness and feelings of security, but most of the time it does. Selfish parent justify making their kids miserable because they ‘deserve happiness’ and ‘are allowed to move on’. It’s a form of emotional abuse and clearly from this thread it damages relationships and leaves lasting negative feelings well into adulthood.

I don’t think they’ve gone out of their way to spite her tbf. They have their feelings and they’ve expressed them - they clearly don’t like her, but if they wanted to directly go at her and OP they would have done. Instead they’ve gone to the person they’ve got the issue with. This is about them and their relationship with their father.

But yes, pretty much. Obviously it’s up to OP and depends on what she wants as an outcome, but if she wants minimal drama and to not risk her marriage then sucking it up and accepting it for what it is, is probably the best course of action. They aren’t going to change, and this will never be a close blended family.

There's no dilemma then. OP and DD have nothing to reproach themselves with, and absolutely no control over the situation, so they'll just have to suck it up. I wouldn't return hostilities, either. It's much more satisfying to be super nice to people who go out of their way to spite you: it's really annoying for them.

You’re not wrong 🫡

So he was an utterly crap dad to his biological children, whilst playing happy families with his new wife and her child. Why am I not surprised. Dinner out a couple of times a week isn't parenting. Favourite uncleing maybe, but not parenting. Sounds like his children played second fiddle for much of their childhoods, and this is just the final straw.

It's the Mumsnet way! 😉

Sure, it’s all just speculation.

They said it when they were teenagers behind her back.
It’s not nice but in order to bully her they’d have to had said it to her face. Whereas the OP said in person they were kind & polite.

It does suggest they resent her though.

She doesn't have to be 'his' to be walked down the aisle by him. Maybe he's ashen-faced because he's fond enough of her to be upset at her being crushed like this: it doesn't have to have deep significance.

Or collusion.

There’s a whole lot of history here that OP has barely scratched the surface of. I would imagine he didn’t take what his ex and son said at face value at all, but understood it within the wider, dysfunctional, context.

If it was important to him that his stepdaughter was considered his, and if he actually did consider her his, he could have stepped in at any point regarding the name, and the state of the relationships between her and his children, parents, and siblings. He chose not to. It’s easy, and arguably more complimentary to him, to put this down as him being weak and ultimately a victim of his children, but it could also be the case that actually, he has no problem with their attitude towards her, has no desire to stand up for her, and has never considered it something he’s needed to confront. He may be happy to play dad for the benefit of his relationship with OP, but that doesn’t mean he truly feels that way towards her. That she used and then dropped his name makes me think that she may not feel as secure in their relationship as OP thinks she does (which is why having those symbolic moments may be important to her, as a form of ‘proof’ that she is a daughter to him).

He may have went home ashen faced because he’s now found himself in a situation where he can’t be passive and dodge any accountability any more. He has to stand on his position and deal with the consequences for his home life. He has stood on his position - but it’s not a position shared with his wife and stepchild.

This family was divided since its inception.